Saturday, February 21, 2009

HOT FLASH FROM PARIS: Romancero GitanoThe historic Folies-Bergères is a dump. Once the Montmartre haunt of Toulouse-Lautrec, and the inspiration of many of his drawings and paintings, the theatre is now crumbling--peeling paint, threadbare carpeting, sagging seats. But it came alive last night with Cristina Hoyos and her Ballet Flamenco Andalucia, who are in Paris to perform Hoyos's choreography for the Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballad) of Andalusian poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.

The troupe performed for two hours, without intermission, bringing down the house with wild cheering, rhythmic clapping, and shouts of "Bravo, bravo!" We jumped to our feet along with everyone else, in total admiration of the troupe's precision, costumes, and sheer joy of dance.

Below is the original Spanish and two English-language translations of the first and fourth stanzas of the famous fourth ballad, which Hoyos chooses to open and close the ballad's exploration of constraints on personal freedom:

Sleepwalking Ballad (I)(my father's literal translation)Green as I love you green.Green wind. Green branches.The ship upon the seaand the horse in the mountain.****Green as I love you green.Great starscome with the shadowthat opens the white road.

Sleepwalking Ballad (II)(transliteration by Carl W. Cobb, University Press of Mississippi, 1983; Cobb's transliteration is so-called because he works to preserve the rules of the ballad in meter, rhyme, syllabification, etc., to be true to the musicality of the form rather than constructing a translation that cleaves to the literal meaning of the words. The two approaches are irreconcilable, so go with the one that speaks to you.)